leaves more amazing than flowers

Sar­race­nia Leah Wilk­er­son pitcher and flower

Today I fea­ture some strik­ing pitcher plant leaves to mark the occa­sion of April’s Foliage Follow-Up, the blog meme begun by Pam of Digging.

The story goes that the early set­tlers mis­took the car­niv­o­rous trumpet-shaped leaves for flow­ers. And how could you blame them? These tall tubes formed from mod­i­fied leaves fea­ture inter­est­ing shapes and col­ors in the green-yellow-white-pink-red range, often with the col­ors form­ing strik­ing pat­terns. They’re eas­ily as inter­est­ing as most flowers.

Botanist Don­ald E. Schnell writes in Car­niv­o­rous Plants of the United States and Canada, “there seems to be noth­ing sub­tle about pitcher plants. Their gen­eral appear­ance begs atten­tion, and when we encounter them we are almost star­tled. But once we look for awhile, then wan­der among them, we can begin to peel apart lay­ers of sub­tlety and see many lit­tle secrets that col­lec­tive fit these plants so neatly into their bog habitat–and we still do not know all their secrets.”

Schnell has divided the car­niv­o­rous pitcher leaf into 5 dif­fer­ent zones, each with a dif­fer­ent mor­phol­ogy. The scary insect-eating and –digest­ing car­nivory takes place down in zones 3 and 4, the lower parts of the pitcher. But these pho­tos con­cen­trate on the backs of the top lid of these pitch­ers, the entire lid being what Schnell calls zone 1.

The top of the pitcher of Sar­race­nia Leah Wilkerson

Sar­race­nia Mardi Gras

Sar­race­nia leu­co­phylla, red, Franklin County, Florida

Sar­race­nia leu­co­phylla ‘Tarnok’

Sar­race­nia mitchel­liana. Within a few weeks the pitcher will be entirely maroon.

Sar­race­nia (flava x mitchel­liana). Plants with brown­ish leaves are often a hard sell, but I think this plant makes a good case that they can look rich and won­der­ful, not like dead leaves.

Sar­race­nia Judith Hin­dle

Sar­race­nia W.C.

Sar­race­nia Red Suma­tra. This early in the sea­son it looks more like Pink Suma­tra, but the color will darken before long.

Even though my sar­race­nia plants get to live in a cushy USDA Zone 10 gar­den (not to be con­fused with the zones of a sar­rece­nia pitcher), their inter­nal clocks seem more tuned in to sea­sonal cycles of daylength or rel­a­tive tem­per­a­tures than to absolute tem­per­a­tures. Most of the species and hybrids have been sus­pi­cious of San Diego’s warm cli­mate and keep their flow­ers and foliage devel­op­ing in the rhi­zomes all win­ter. Only now are most begin­ning to bloom and send out leaves, though maybe a lit­tle bit ear­lier than in the Amer­i­can South­east, where these plants originate.

As the sea­son pro­gresses, these leaves will often develop dif­fer­ent col­orations. The veins in some will grow more pro­nounced, some pitch­ers will go all-red, oth­ers will show a golden under­glow. The brief burst of spring flow­ers in these plants is great, but the foliage makes for months of really cool leaf-viewing.

For all sorts of other foliage hap­pen­ings in the gar­den world, check out the links in this month’s Foliage Follow-Up post at Dig­ging. Thanks for host­ing, Pam!


April 16 2010 10:06 am | Categories: gardening • my garden | Tags: • • •

13 Responses to “leaves more amazing than flowers”

  1. Debbie on 16 Apr 2010 at 3:19 pm #

    I had no idea those were the leaves, I assumed that was the flower. I love a post where I can learn some­thing new and be enter­tained at the same time.

  2. Wendy on 16 Apr 2010 at 5:30 pm #

    I didn’t know these were leaves either! Cool. These plants are really amaz­ing. Are these the ones that can “eat” small ani­mals — or am I think­ing of some­thing else?

  3. Floridagirl on 16 Apr 2010 at 5:53 pm #

    Wow! Those pho­tos are beau­ti­ful. They are amaz­ing plants. This post was quite interesting!

  4. Town Mouse on 16 Apr 2010 at 6:56 pm #

    Great pho­tos. I’m impressed, I barely man­aged bloom day, never mind a fol­low up. Looks like the rains have really helped your carnies along.

  5. gardener on 17 Apr 2010 at 11:08 am #

    Hi Janes
    Great to con­nect with you. There is a species of pitcher plant that grows in Canada. It’s Sar­race­nia pur­purea and it’s the offi­cial flower of the province. So it’s one that can take the cold and wind. I’ve had the good for­tune to seen large spreads of them when on a hike in New­found­land. I remem­ber think­ing that they must be very well feed, as the mos­qui­toes in the boggy area were big and hun­gry. The leaf veins look like blood veins, appro­pri­ate don’t you think.

  6. Noelle/azplantlady on 17 Apr 2010 at 11:15 am #

    I find it fas­ci­nat­ing. There a few other plants that I can think of that have pret­tier foliage then flow­ers. Isn’t nature great?

  7. Pam/Digging on 17 Apr 2010 at 1:48 pm #

    Pitcher plants have a cer­tain sin­is­ter glamor, don’t they? What a great plant to focus on for Foliage Follow-Up. Thanks for join­ing in, James.

  8. ricki - sprig to twig on 17 Apr 2010 at 4:30 pm #

    Look­ing at them your way, the leaves almost resem­ble heucheras. Very inter­est­ing per­spec­tive, but i miss see­ing the archi­tec­ture of the whole plant.

  9. Melody on 18 Apr 2010 at 5:04 am #

    I’m another one that thought the pitcher was the flower — lol. I imag­ine a lot of peo­ple think that. I also didn’t real­ize there were so many dif­fer­ent color vari­a­tions. I am going to have to exam­ine them more closely next I see them at a plant show.

  10. Christine on 21 Apr 2010 at 7:06 am #

    I miss hav­ing Sar­race­nias, but I don’t miss for­get­ting to buy dis­tilled water! Can rain­wa­ter be har­vested as an alter­na­tive? I’d love to start a col­lec­tion of native car­ni­vores– keep mean­ing to go to the nurs­ery we have up here that spe­cial­izes in them.

  11. lostlandscape on 21 Apr 2010 at 8:18 pm #

    Deb­bie, I have a hard time believ­ing they’re leaves, too, since they’re so weird and wonderful…

    Wendy, these guys are car­niv­o­rous plants, so they’ll dine on mostly insects. For me the pitch­ers seem to attract flies most.

    FLorida­girl, I’m glad you enjoyed the post. I really like shar­ing my excite­ment in some seri­ously cool plants.

    gar­dener, I have a cou­ple hybrids that use the Cana­dian species as one par­ent, but the plant itself has a rep­u­ta­tion for not doing well in warmer cli­mates like mine. Appar­ently it’s so com­mon and inter­est­ing a plant that it’s the flo­ral emblem of New­found­land and Labrador. The red veins do seem to belie its car­niv­o­rous ways.

    Noelle, as you point out many plants are known pri­mar­ily as “foliage plants” since their leaves so out­shine any flow­ers they might have. Or in the case of more ancient plants like ferns, they don’t flower at all…

    Pam, yes, I think the plants strike a some­what uncom­fort­able bal­ance between being stun­ning and creepy. It def­i­nitely adds some­thing to their mystique.

    Ricki, I agree that the most amaz­ing struc­tures of these plants are the pitch­ers. Each part of the pitcher seems to have its own inter­est­ing pat­tern­ings, with the lids hav­ing some of the splashiest coloration.

    Melody, def­i­nitely take a closer look next time you see any of these plants. They’re really com­plex things to study–and actu­ally sur­pris­ingly easy to grow given lots of sun­light and lots of water.

    Chris­tine, I give my plants rain­wa­ter when I can. I have about eighty gal­lons saved up now, but I’ll go through all that and have to make some fil­tered water for them when we enter our long and dry sum­mer. There are some Cal­i­for­nia sun­dews (drosera) that should be pretty easy to grow, along with some aquatic species (utric­u­laria). And then there’s the spec­tac­u­lar cobra lily, Dar­ling­to­nia cal­i­for­nia, which unfor­tu­nately is a fairly dif­fi­cult plant for may peo­ple who’ve tried to grow it, myself included.

  12. Raised garden beds on 22 Apr 2010 at 3:54 am #

    Those are beautiful!

  13. Rob on 07 Nov 2010 at 11:09 am #

    Very nice Sar­race­nia there! My favorite car­ni­vore :)

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